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Ooligan Press

A large part of the publishing program at PSU is working at the university’s publishing house, Ooligan Press. Students are assigned group projects to work on, and this term I’m working on a conference called Write to Publish. It’s a day-long conference on February 4, 2017 at the PSU campus, and we’re going to have lots of cool vendors and publishing professionals there.

Why am I telling you this if the conference is still over three months away? Well, as part of raising funds for the conference, we’re hosting a writing contest! Well, two contests, technically. Our fiction contest accepts pieces of 1,000 words or fewer, on any genre. The Masters Review will be helping us by publishing the winning piece, and the first-place author will also receive a $50 cash prize. In addition to the fiction contest, we’re hosting a poetry contest. The theme for poetry is “Belonging” and the poem must be 40 lines or fewer. The Timberline Review will publish the winning piece, and the winning author will also receive a $50 cash prize.

Have something you’d like to submit? Click HERE for more contest details and the link to submit! Unfortunately, we do not accept any previously published work, and there is a $10 submission fee to help cover the cost of organizing the contest. BUT, we’ve only had a few submissions in each genre, so I’d say your chances of placing are fairly high. Plus, the contests are open to anyone, regardless of age, education level, or experience. So, even if you’ve never submitted your work to a contest before (or even shown it to anyone), you’re free to submit!

I can’t say enough how cool Ooligan Press is. It’s run entirely by students, all the way from the acquisitions process to the editing to the book design and finally to marketing and event planning. Part of why Ooligan started Write to Publish was to “demystify” the publication process, and the conference will have workshops, panel discussions, and even pitching sessions to achieve that end. Publishing your work can seem like a scary, undefined journey, but it doesn’t have to be.

Tickets are still available (and compared to other conferences, they’re quite affordable). The general adult ticket is $80 and the student ticket is $35. You can purchase them (as well as the contest entry tickets) HERE.

I encourage anyone and everyone interested in publishing their work to attend the conference. We would absolutely love to see you there. If you have any questions, check out the contest FAQ or shoot me a message and I’ll try my best to help!